Travel and transport

Nineteenth on this list is o quarto duplo, the double room, and the noun inside it does three jobs that English hands to three words with nothing in common. It is the room you sleep in — Reservei um quarto duplo, and a hotel corridor in Portugal is a row of quartos. It is the ordinal: o quarto andar is the fourth floor, and a quarta-feira, Wednesday, is the fourth day once you start counting at Sunday. And it is the fraction: um quarto de hora is a quarter of an hour, três quartos is three quarters. English keeps « room », « fourth » and « quarter » apart and lets nothing pass between them, so the three senses look like an accident of sound. They are not, and English holds the bridge itself without using it much: « quarters », as in living quarters, is where somebody is housed. Read o quarto as the quarter of a house that has been given to you, and the hotel and the clock stop looking like two different words.